Code of Ethics

Preamble: As members of the Society for News Design, we have an obligation to promote the highest ethical standards for visual journalism — for all journalism — as they apply to the values of accuracy, fairness, honesty, inclusiveness, and courage.

Accuracy

Accuracy is the indispensable value in journalism and must not be compromised. We must deliver error-free content, across all our media platforms. We must ensure that our content is a verifiable representation of the news and of our subjects. We promise never intentionally to mislead those who depend upon us for public service. We will correct errors promptly and prominently. We must be as accurate with our colleagues as we are with our audiences.

Honesty

We value original thought and expression. Our work will be free from fraud and deception — that includes plagiarism and fabrication. We will attribute content and honor copyrights. We will strive to keep news content free of special interests, inside or outside the news organization. We embrace the value of transparency, disclosing the thinking behind key decisions — from a credit line up to an editor’s note on the front page.

Fairness

We must be scrupulously fair. We recognize that our work can have great impact on the subjects we cover and therefore we must respectfully balance that against the public’s need to know. Even when it is impossible to avoid harm in the pursuit of truth telling, we will work hard to minimize that harm. We will listen to our critics. Our judgment in these matters must be based on our sense of right and wrong in a manner consistent with our professional values.

Inclusiveness

We will remain vigilant in our quest to combat prejudice and lead needed reforms. We will avoid stereotypes in reporting, editing, presentation, and hiring. Diversity, broadly defined, will be a hallmark of our work.

We accept the responsibility to understand our communities and to overcome bias with coverage that is representative of the constituent groups in the community. Over time, many groups, lifestyles, and backgrounds should see themselves and their values represented in the news.

Courage

Journalists need moral and, at times, physical courage to fulfill their responsibility to serve the public. It takes courage to stand behind values such as accuracy, honesty, fairness and inclusiveness. Such courage is necessary to achieve personal integrity and build credibility. This includes the courage to step beyond rigid boundaries. We must test conventional thinking explore innovative story-telling to help changing audiences understand an increasingly complex world.

Logic and literalness, objectivity and traditional thinking have their important place, but so must imagination and intuition, responsible creativity and empathy.